Black women are the touchstone by which all that is human can be measured.

Racism will disappear when it's no longer profitable, and no longer psychologically useful. And when that happens, it'll be gone. But at the moment, people make a lot of money off of it, pro and con.

She had been looking all along for a friend, and it took her a while to discover that a lover was not a comrade and could never be - for a woman. And that no one would ever be that version of herself which she sought to reach out to and touch with an ungloved hand. There was only her own mood and whim, and if that was all there was, she decided to turn the naked hand toward it, discover it and let others become as intimate with their own selves as she was.

I get angry about things, then go on and work.

I thought the whole world was like Lorain.

There in the center of that silence was not eternity but the death of time and a loneliness so profound the word itself had no meaning.

I know that my books are worthy, which is separate from me.